Old truths decay and new ones are born at an astonishing rate.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Increased K-12 spending and lower
pupil/teacher ratios boost public school student outcomes. Most of
the DNA in the human genome is junk. Saccharin causes cancer and a
high fiber diet prevents it. Stars cannot be bigger than 150 solar
masses.

In the past half-century, all of the foregoing facts have turned
out to be wrong. In the modern world facts change all of the time,
according to Samuel Arbesman, author of the new book The
Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration
Date (Current).

Fact-making is speeding up, writes Arbesman, a senior scholar at
the Kaufmann Foundation and an expert in scientometrics, the
science of measuring and analyzing science. As facts are made and
remade with increasing speed, Arbesman is worried that most of us
don’t keep up to date. That means we’re basing decisions on facts
dimly remembered from school and university classes—facts that
often turn out to be wrong.

In 1947, the mathematician Derek J. de Solla
Price was asked to store a complete set of The Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society temporarily in his house.
Price stacked them in chronological order by decade, and he noticed
that the number of volumes doubled about every 15 years, i.e.,
scientific knowledge was apparently growing at an exponential rate.
Thus the field of scientometrics was born.

Price started to analyze all sorts of other kinds of scientific
data, and concluded in 1960 that scientific knowledge had been
growing steadily at a rate of 4.7 percent annually for the last
three centuries. In 1965, he exuberantly observed, “All crude
measures, however arrived at, show to a first approximation that
science increases exponentially, at a compound interest of about 7
percent per annum, thus doubling in size every 10–15 years,
growing by a factor of 10 every half century, and by something like
a factor of a million in the 300 years which separate us from
the seventeenth-century invention of the scientific paper when the
process began.”

A 2010 study in the journal Scientometrics, looking at
data between 1907 and 2007, concurred: The “overall growth rate for
science still has been at least 4.7 percent per year.”

Since knowledge is still growing at an
impressively rapid pace, it should not be surprising that
many facts people learned in school have been overturned and are
now out of date. But at what rate do former facts disappear?
Arbesman applies to the dissolution of facts the concept of
half-life—the time required for half the atoms of a given amount of
a radioactive substance to disintegrate. For example, the half-life
of the radioactive isotope strontium-90 is just over 29 years.
Applying the concept of half-life to facts, Arbesman cites research
that looked into the decay in the truth of clinical knowledge about
cirrhosis and hepatitis. “The half-life of truth was 45 years,” he
found.

In other words, half of what physicians thought they knew about
liver diseases was wrong or obsolete 45 years later. Similarly,
ordinary people’s brains are cluttered with outdated lists of
things, such as the 10 biggest cities in the United States.

Facts are being manufactured all of the time, and, as Arbesman
shows, many of them turn out to be wrong. Checking each one is how
the scientific process is supposed to work; experimental results
need to be replicated by other researchers. So how many of the
findings in 845,175 articles published in 2009 and recorded in
PubMed, the free online medical database, were actually replicated?
Not all that many. In 2011, a disquieting study in Nature
reported that a team of researchers over 10 years was able to
reproduce the results of only six out of 53 landmark papers in
preclinical cancer research.

In 2005, the physician and statistician John
Ioannides published “Why Most Published Research Findings Are
False” in the journal PLoS Medicine. Ioannides cataloged
the flaws of much biomedical research, pointing out that reported
studies are less likely to be true when they are small, the
postulated effect is likely to be weak, research designs and
endpoints are flexible, financial and nonfinancial conflicts of
interest are common, and competition in the field is fierce.
Ioannides concluded that “for many current scientific fields,
claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of
the prevailing bias.” Still, knowledge marches on, spawning new
facts and changing old ones.

Another reason that personal knowledge decays is that people
cling to selected “facts” as a way to justify their beliefs about
how the world works. Arbesman notes, “We persist in only adding
facts to our personal store of knowledge that jibe with what we
already know, rather than assimilate new facts irrespective of how
they fit into our worldview.” All too true; confirmation bias is
everywhere.

So is there anything we can do to keep up to date with the
changing truth? Arbesman suggests that simply knowing that our
factual knowledge bases have a half-life should keep us humble and
ready to seek new information. Well, hope springs
eternal.

More daringly, Arbesman suggests, “Stop memorizing things and
just give up. Our individual memories can be outsourced to the
cloud.” Through the Internet, we can “search for any fact we need
any time.” Really? The Web is great for finding an up-to-date list
of the 10 biggest cities in the United States, but if the
scientific literature is littered with wrong facts, then cyberspace
is an enticing quagmire of falsehoods, propaganda, and just plain
bunkum. There simply is no substitute for skepticism.

Toward the end of his book, Arbesman suggests that “exponential
knowledge growth cannot continue forever.” Among the reasons he
gives for the slowdown is that current growth rates imply that
everyone on the planet would one day be a scientist. The 2010
Scientometrics study also mused about the growth rate in
the number of scientists and offered a conjecture “that the
borderline between science and other endeavors in the modern,
global society will become more and more blurred.” Most may be
scientists after all. Arbesman notes that “the number of neurons
that can be recorded simultaneously has been growing exponentially,
with a doubling time of about seven and a half years.” This
suggests that brain/computer linkages will one day be
possible.

I, for one, am looking forward to updating my factual knowledge
daily through a direct telecommunications link from my brain
to digitized contents of the Library of Congress.

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Four years later, their story seems less like a tribute to upward
mobility than a study of obstacles in an age of soaring economic
inequality. Not one of them has a four-year degree. Only one is
still studying full time, and two have crushing debts. Angelica,
who left Emory owing more than $60,000, is a clerk in a Galveston
furniture store.

Each showed the ability to do college work, even excel at it. But
the need to earn money brought one set of strains, campus
alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in school
added complications. With little guidance from family or school
officials, college became a leap that they braved without a safety
net.

The story of their lost footing is also the story of something
larger — the growing role that education plays in preserving class
divisions.

But the need to earn money brought one set of strains,
campus alienation brought others, and ties to boyfriends not in
school added complications.

Need to earn money isn't new. I learned more about real life
from a paper route and cutting lawns than from public school.

It says a lot about what we've allowed to happen to education
when the definition of academic includes
"Unaware of the outside world"
"Formalistic or conventional"
"Theoretical or speculative without a practical purpose or
intention"
"Having no practical purpose or use."

Higher education is the modern equivalent of monasteries and
seminaries. Sucking up a large and increasing portion of the
nation's wealth and twisting the minds that they come in contact
with to non productive means.

wow...so much ideological swill in that passage it is hard to
know where to begin. If you didn't know better, it would be easy to
think that no one ever worked his/her way through college, no one
ever struggled, and certainly no one without a degree ever amounted
to anything.

To be fair, we do have a government aggressively inflating a
bubble in the price of education. Combine this with
reclassification of jobs that used to require only a high school
diploma now requiring a college degree, and you've got a recipe for
disaster.

so much ideological swill in that passage it is hard to know
where to begin.

Yeah, I experienced that too. I advised each of my four
daughters to dump the futureless boyfriends and concentrate on
school.
The "campus alienation" part has me stumped, though. Does that mean
they can't make friends?

I think that is thrown in there as an argument for increasing
diversity and maintaining affirmative action admission policies,
even implicit in that argument is that they think all minorities
are the same. It's just like the Prophet video. It should be
censored because it's so insensitive. But why does that matter? Oh
well because you know how "they" will react. That is the unsaid
assumption in their thinking.

Technically, the only "prophet" depicted there is Moses. Jesus
and Ganesha are divine beings themselves. Hotei/Budai, as an avatar
of Maitreya Buddha, is either divine (folk Taoism) or merely an
enlightened being (Mahayana Buddhism)

The heart wants what it wants.
My eldest daughter's old HS boyfriend is still working at the same
place he did when she went off to college. He asks about her every
time I see him. She still has a few old pics of him up on her wall.
She'll be graduating this year, and I expect they will give it
another try after that. Fine by me. He's a good kid.

The actual metric should be frequency vs. time rather than per
word, so the extrapolation can be extended beyond their 100% year
by just imagining we open our mouths more & more, babbling
"sustainable", like "DoubleYourSpeedDotCom", and start running the
printing presses and communication lines overtime with that word.
No telling how far we can take it then.

The practitioners seem to believe that one fact is equal to the
next. This is incorrect. Much of the scientific knowledge in
production today is academic busy work designed to pad resumes and
climb the greasy pole.

Of all papers submitted for publication, only a small % are
cited by other scientists, and these are dominated by a small
number that attract the lion's share of attention.

Any serious references to "The Kardashians", Idiocracy, the
"Stupid Bowl", etc. as evidence of some sort of society-wide
decline reveal the speaker to be an unthinking faux-elitist and a
grade-A moron.

The actual 15-year-old perspective is to pull a whiny Goth move,
look out the window and say "Look at all those dumb sheeple out
there, entertained with their Kardashians and their Super Bowl.
Good thing for me I'm the Lone Sane Man in a sea of Idiots. WAKE UP
AMERICA"

It'd be nice, however, if you could convincingly present your
arguments in a rational manner designed to convince rather than
humiliate. I realize some debates devolve into pissing contests and
ad homs. Got it. I have a pretty thick skin. But you might try
posing your argument WITHOUT pissing off your opponent right out of
the chute. You do it ALL THE TIME.

You called me a moron before I even understood what you were
driving at. Your point has some validity and I'll need to ponder
it, however, jumping my shit before explaining your perspective,
just makes you a dick.

Fair enough. I probably reacted too strongly but this is a
personal pet-peeve of mine. Frankly, I find it ironically common
for people to think that everyone but themselves likes and does
dumb things, and it's ironic because in trying to set yourself
apart via "superior culture", you are in fact thinking the exact
same way so many other people think.

I feel strongly, though, that someone like you ought to know
better. Google "tiddlywink music", as an example. Also, Rand's
favorite show at the time of the Donahue interview was
Charlie's Angels.

I put it to you that it's not the liking of a reality show
that's at issue. It's where that ranks on your importance of
issues.

Rand may have like Charlie's Angels, but her passion and life's
work was Objectivism.

I love, and watch a lot of science fiction (GM, note I said
"watch"). My father thinks it's a complete wast of time and to a
certain degree, he's right. There are more important
endeavors...which I engage in, most of which revolve around my
philosophy.

While I don't have empirical data "proving" we are in decline,
notionally, it looks that way to me. As GM says below, when the
average person on the street knows who Snooki is, but cannot
identify the Speaker of the House, priorities are not quite
right.

Do I look down on those, who I would claim, have fucked up
priorities? You bet I do. Is my way "superior?" Sure is. It's based
on reason (drink). A is A.

Do I judge them to harshly? Maybe. Do they have the right to be
idiots? Sure do.

Am I wrong? I guess that depends on whether my notional evidence
is correct or not. I suspect it is, but if you have empirical
evidence that shows otherwise, by all means, serve it up.

Of course it does, because then you can take your own bad
tastes and say "well, hey, at least I'm better than him"

Then you have described not only human nature in general, but
they are psychological rationale that we use to justify our
behaviour, our likes, dislikes, and general interests.

Otherwise, I'm sure you subjected your decision to marry Mrs.
TAO to the most rigourous of logical standards, identifying
every single factor weighing every single logical
outcome, applied to a logical numerical matrix, and
decided accordingly. I'm sure every single decision you make is
plugged into a logically unbreakable formulae on paper, such as
your diet, and every result is perfectly, logically elegant and
totally justifiable and worthy of the proofs of Plato, the
syllogisms of Aristotle, and the questioning of Socrates.

I would also suggest not using this line of rationale with Mrs.
TAO. Or you might just get a borshh pan upside the head (and well
deserved too, I might add.)-D

Otherwise, I'm sure you subjected your decision to
marry Mrs. TAO to the most rigourous of logical standards,
identifying every single factor weighing every single logical
outcome, applied to a logical numerical matrix, and decided
accordingly

I hadn't seen that before, HM, and it was awesome, so thank you.
Too bad it was too early for him to have read Moby-Dick:
"I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or
at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it
anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart,
the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country." Better
than a dog anyhow!

Notionally, people seemed more knowledgeable, less superficial
and perhaps most importantly, cared about accurately portraying
issues when I was a kid. But perhaps that's because I was a kid and
more easily deceived. They seemed less tolerant of being lied to.
They demanded more from their media than spin and sound bites. I
can tell you, again notionally, Walter Cronkite was a shit-load
more objective than Wolf Blitzer.

I may be wrong. I may be clouding my memories EXACTLY as you
claim. But on the other hand, just because my information isn't
based upon scientific data, doesn't mean I'm wrong either. I'd love
to see a study.

And I am better than a good portion of the population. I do not
apologize for that. Neither would your hero.

"Frankly, I find it ironically common for people to think that
everyone but themselves"
There is a difference between saying everyone is an idiot, and the
majority of people were idiots. Since when has this been a giant
popularity contest?

People used to live in larger family or tribal groups. These
days we're a bit more isolated and we tend to replace the constant
family drama with an arguably more entertaining televised form. I
disagree with the 99% garbage figure; sure, a good chunk of the
data on the internet is useless fluff, but I've heard an even
larger chunk is porn.

People used to live in larger family or tribal groups.
These days we're a bit more isolated and we tend to replace the
constant family drama with an arguably more entertaining televised
form.

Ah, I think that's a plausible thesis. If anything, though, it
would show evolution rather than devolution. There is a constant
drumbeat of "Durr American Idol and Smartphones keep us dumb!",
when in fact we may be entertaining ourselves more intelligently
(or at least at a higher rate of return of entertainment/effort)
than we did previously.

When he wrote his Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
noted how he could walk into the grimiest bar in the country, and
that the find lowly dockworker would have an opinion about
politics. Today you can go into the richest neighborhood in the
nation and find that the rich have opinions about Rich Slut A or
Rich Slut B that would made even the lowliest drunk in 1850 feel
"superior." Then the cosmos would tell him he's an "elitist."
What's wrong with being a decent human being and not being ashamed
of it?

From what I’ve seen on the internet, it seems like
people use [Idiocracy] as a security blanket to make themselves
feel more intelligent. “Thank god someone hates this awful culture
as much as I do!” they seem to say. “Mike Judge gets it!
Everything’s so disposable and trashy, I’m glad he feels as lost as
I do and takes the same pleasure in skewering those fools who watch
reality tv and footbaaah!”

Judge has the narrator of the movie explicitly say that the
humanity's condition in the 26th century was the direct result of
stupid people breeding and smart people not.

It's a couple of minute long, multi-scene segment.

So saying:

The film’s greatest failing is that it could’ve done
more to drive its point home. Instead, it’s squeezed it into a
single line, where Joe says “I think maybe the world got like this
because of people like me”. Not because of ‘idiots breeding’, not
because of shitty television, advertising, or a sustained campaign
of anti-intellectualism, but because of average people, like the
viewers (ie you and I), who had endless opportunities to improve
themselves and didn’t. Because they were too busy looking at
everyone else and thinking “well, at least I’m smarter than
you.”

Randian is a classic cosmotarian. Anyone who thinks their
smarter than anyone else is an "elitist," or a "smuggie douche."
The fact is that smart people built America. The problem is that we
have lost sight of that due to a need to have "equality."

Placing "their" where "they're" belongs, or vice-versa, isn't a
spelling mistake. It's an error in grammar that is disruptive to
the flow of ideas. Like a spelling error, it weakens your
presentation. Unlike a spelling error, it demonstrates an actual
misunderstanding of how English is used.

they're == they are (contraction)
their == possessive (adjective)

Language is the palette of the writer. You can finger-paint like
an addled child because you simply refuse to take the time, or you
can try to construct art. Your call.

I agree. We have lost sight of what made our nation great. We
have a situation where the stupid live off the smart, and reproduce
themselves at a much faster rate. If society does survive I'm sure
Idiocracy will be shown in a great many classrooms of the future.
The problem with our culture is this ideal of equality, embraced by
my cosmos here. The idea that we should never question the worth of
reproduction of the cleavon-types, because that would be "elitist."
That we should never question whether women should sleep around
with the biggest, meanest man they could get. The idea that we
should never question feminism, adultery, or divorce. A big reason
I have found that fellow Trevor-types don't reproduce is fear of
divorce or infidelity on the part of their women. And our
opposition movements don't help. The left has found that by making
the idea of equality the ultimate cultural good, they can dragoon
the opposition into agreeing with them. The "conservatives" rarely
question whether we should give Cleavon free medical care, but
think that giving him a free sterilization would be "nazi"
"eugenics" or "Margaret Sanger." The Cosmatarians here call anyone
who questions the worth of the lower class as also being "elitist"
in contrast to themselves "respectable" libertarians, at least in
their own eyes.

Our circuses have finally come back to the point where they
again rival those put on by the Romans. We don't have the live
tigers but we've got drunk celebs with sports cars that can do as
much damage (and 24/7 streaming video of it all).

I dunno, TAO. Some of the videos Reason has produced seem to
indicate otherwise. Such as the famous "Choice" video showing an
incredible lack of self-awareness. Another is the "Drone Justice"
video shown to Obama supporters, yet still displayed.

I'm not that effete that just because my interests may not
intersect with another person's interest cluster doesn't make them
a moron per se.

When they don't know basic facts about history, particularly
their own nation's, then I have to wonder. Grantd it's
entertainment and not a clinical study, but your average segment of
"Jay-walking" certainly suggests what I postulated.

Also of note are comments on Shit Flopney's milquetoast and
mediocre campaign.

I appreciate your piss and vinegar here, TAO, (I'm terribly
homesick at the moment), but sheesh.

If I ask you the latest stats on certain disease processes and
latest TX modalities, and you are most likely not going to know off
the top of your head, doesn't mean you are an idiot, and would not
accuse you of such because I know better.

When it's governmental stuff that does affect me and
uninformed voters (meaning that they don't know what's going on
with both TEAMS) are helping decide my fate, then I have a
right to bitch. Your average Reason reader is
pretty information dense, politically speaking. The general public,
not so much.

I don't. Time and time again, government-run schools have been
abused. The curriculum is politicized and always presented to
support the status quo. How many school children graduate thinking
America is a "two-party government"?

"Ferdinand designed the system as sort of a "factory worker"
factory. It works to that end pretty well."
I disagree. Have you seen the work ethics of these kids? The poor
want to go on welfare and the rich want daddy to pay for
everything. The idea of "work" is apparently "fascist" to them.

"But I do have to wonder when most everybody you ask knows who
Snooki is but have no idea who John Boehner is.
Do you have any evidence or polls for either of your anecdotes
here? Any at all?"
That's like asking someone to prove that the sun rises in the east.
You really must live in a cave.

"Anybody who doesn't take an interest in what I am interested in
is Teh Stoopid"
Anyone who puts more value on understand politics or mathematics
then remembering the seven guys Kim Kardashian has slept with in
the past year is an "elitist!!" EQUALITY FOREVER!!!!!!!

Actually, while most human DNA is biologically active by the
broadest definition in the latest study, that's not the
same as saying it isn't junk. Useless stuff like retrotransposons
could still be the vast majority of human DNA.

Looks like the AM links to me; astute business comment
section.
Don't worry, we'll make it up in volume!
"Washington is agreeing to sell its stake in General Motors on
terms that may yield a $12 billion-plus loss. But the results - a
million jobs saved, a revived auto industry, an economic sector
salvaged - merit a sigh of relief."
It should be no wonder that the paper is losing money.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/.....142470.php

The arsenic in apple juice nonsense that he helped fan the
flames of, for one.

I could swear he had Jenny McCarthy on his show this season,
too, one that didn't involve him beating the shit out of her for
the "vaccines cause autism" shit. (Sure enough, a Google search
suggests it was back in October.)

Our bottom line: Vaccinations have more benefits than
risks. Are they 100 percent safe? No. But the benefits vastly
outweigh the dangers.

Refusing to vaccinate has consequences; 2010 saw more than 21,000
cases of whooping cough in the U.S.; 22 children less than 1 year
old died.

When children don’t get vaccinations, it endangers their health and
everyone else’s. About 5 percent of the time, vaccinations don’t
produce immunity; but protection for the whole community is better
if everyone gets the shots.

It explains why his campaign was so crappy. He only really took
it to Obama in the 1st debate. He never offered any reason why he
wanted to be, let alone should be president. Never defended the
biography that was his whole campaign. And he always sound
uncomfortable when he was publicly speaking, like a guy that was
pulled out of the audience and wasn't sure what to say or how to
say it.

The NYPD intends to create algorithms that scan the
text of conversations in chat rooms, social media and emails for
clues on potential ‘apolitical or deranged killers’, according to
NYT. NYPD Police Chief Raymond Kelly said in a statement.

The goal would be to identify the shooter in cyberspace, engage him
there and intervene, possibly using an undercover to get close, and
take him into custody or otherwise disrupt his plans.
....

This is particularly bizarre since it appears that Adam Lanza, the
shooter at the Sandy Hook Elementary Schoold, didn't leave any kind
of Facebook or twitter clues. What algorithm would have spotted him
in advance

Also raises the question of accessing email and private
communications or private forums, etc

The thought of the NYPD 'developing algorithms' makes me loff
and loff and loff. I mean I feel a tiny tiny bit bad for the New
Yorkers who are going to have to foot the bill for that waste of
cash, but really, the more money they dump into that pit, the less
they'll have to fund stop and searches.

So I made the mistake of flipping by the news this morning. Now,
since calling them evil and crazy hasn't worked, the media is
saying it was the NRA's "tone" that was wrong. This from the people
who said hi owners and the NRA are respnisible for dead children.
They can accuse you of being an accessory to murder but if you
fight back iris your tone that makes you wrong. God I hate those
people.

It's a not-so-subtle way of trying to check someone's manhood.
After you've proven someone to be wrong, rather than accepting
defeat they will claim that your "tone" was wrong (whatever the
fuck that means).

Not only that, some links on Drudge this morning suggest that
Gregory may have broken the law on that segment when he displayed,
in DC, a 30-round magazine. And Don Lemon apparently may have
illegally purchased an AR in Colorado after the Aurora shooting. So
weird.

Exactly. I was born in 1982 is a fact. Stop signs in the US are
red and white, is a fact. Everything that follows is either a
hypothesis, a guess, a theory, or something someone said that
sounds like it could be true, none of them are facts.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded. Increased K-12 spending and
lower pupil/teacher ratios boost public school student outcomes.
Most of the DNA in the human genome is junk. Saccharin causes
cancer and a high fiber diet prevents it. Stars cannot be bigger
than 150 solar masses.

It's also equally true that you were born in 2526 B.E. (Buddhist
Era) and in 5743 A.M. (Jewish Calendar). What many people don't
appreciate is that scientific facts are model-dependent. Many
times, models no longer possess any utility, and thus, their
related "facts" are tossed aside. However, we can have seemingly
contradictory facts whose truth depends on what aspect of the
universe we are observing. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry is
a prime example.

I'm sure there were people who said, when Columbus came
back, "He just didn't go all the way to the edge."

I doubt it, as everyone* in Europe thought the world was round.
The Greeks had proven that by about 300 BC (although the Greek
concept of a spherical Earth dates back to about 600 BC).
Eratosthenes had a pretty good estimate of its radius by about 240
BC.

In fact, if it weren't for genderwashing, men would go back to only
reporting on Cinderella deaths - where the only person other than
men defined as exempt from violence is the benevolent sexism side
of their usual madonna/whore or mother/whore hatred of people who
have a vagina and a heartbeat.

If white women know anything about white men that any other woman
might not have realized - and that's pretty unlikely, but who
knows? - it's that to white men, guns are just the stake 2.0 and
who wouldn't rather be shot than burned alive? Because white women
are acutely aware that's what white men do when they get their
fee-fees all in a twist and decide it was women who pissed them
off.

It's less cowardice, on the part of white women, and more like
learned helplessness? I don't know. Maybe we should start by
blaming men for male pattern violence, and then factor race in
terms of intensity of aggrieved privilege to explain why in
America, it's almost exclusively white dudes doing this. Non-white
dudes feel plenty entitled to take the lives of others, but not by
the maybe not in elementary schools or retirement homes, a baker's
dozen at a time. Only a white dude could be such phenomenally
unrealistic expectations and bitterness over
disappointment.

Depends on the patient interview, Goldy. I can suspect DV if the
WX pattern is consistent, but if they say, "I FELL, DAMMIT!" with
an overly protective partner looking on, then I have to accept that
information, regardless if whether or not my Spidey Sense is going
off.

Same with suspected child abuse.

That said, the cases of reported DV with a LEO involved were, by
percentage, higher for lesbian than than straight couples. Also of
note is the amount of abusive female spouses for straight couples
which are higher than one might think.

Jezebellian, what you've just said is one of the most insanely
idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling,
incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be
considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber
for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul.

I don't remember anyone talking about race with those DC
snipers. Am I remembering right? In fact, i think that article is
the first time I've heard someone seriously blame someone's race
for murders they commit.

Any serious references to "The Kardashians", Idiocracy, the
"Stupid Bowl", etc. as evidence of some sort of society-wide
decline reveal the speaker to be an unthinking faux-elitist and a
grade-A moron.

His "imagination" consists entirely of the single idea of making
a big budget version of some shitty 1970s exploitation flick that
no one who wasn't stoned ever watched in the first place. Ian so
tired of his sorry ass.

I couldn't decide if it was that, or more some kind of "We're on
the neocon-inspired 'Judeo-Christian culture' bandwagon too,
because we love American Christian tourism and government support"
thing, which would be gross. The cheesiness suggests the former, my
paranoia the latter.

That's why I think it's brilliant...it works both ways. Indeed,
the average Jewish Israeli has the attitude of "Thank you for
support because you that your messiah will use our country as the
beachhead for global apocalypse, which the second act involves
condemning all of us to eternal Hell!"

Same thing with the IDF Babes. On the one hand, it appeals to
the "Chicks with assault rifles are
hot!" crowd, but they can counter any accusations of sexism with
"What, we're just showing how progressive our armed forces are.
Women on the front lines!"

Indeed. I started following them on Twitter when their latest
bit of Gazan action exploded the feed to notoriety and it's been
quite interesting. At the time I got a real kick out of how
horrified everyone else I follow was by propaganda of exactly the
same type we see from our own government every single day.

A while ago, as I was aimlessly flipping through the channels,
some Congressman from New York was moaning and groaning about how
those poor victims of the Superduperstorm of the Century! need free
money from the federal government. Then he brought up the tale of
all the poor Humpty Dumpties in New Orleans who still haven't been
put back together.

I'm not sure why bringing up the incompetence and mendacity of
the Katrina aftermath is helpful to any claim of a need for
government intervention.

I really don't see how Katrianatwon looked any better before the
hurricane. It makes you wonder. Back in 1995, and in 2011,
disasters happened in Japan. But, for some strange reason, there
were no riots. Luckily for the Obama administration the hurricane
this time hit an area closer to Japan than to the Gulf if you know
what I'm saying.

Republican politicians today have a choice: either change
your base by educating and leading G.O.P. voters back to the
center-right from the far right, or start a new party that is more
inclusive, focused on smaller but smarter government and
market-based, fact-based solutions to our biggest
problems.

But if Republicans continue to be led around by, and live in
fear of, a base that denies global warming after Hurricane Sandy
and refuses to ban assault weapons after Sandy Hook — a base that
would rather see every American’s taxes rise rather than increase
taxes on millionaires — the party has no future. It can’t win with
a base that is at war with math, physics, human biology, economics
and common-sense gun laws all at the same time.

The World According to Friedman: Your BASE (that is, the people
whom you claim to want to represent) is unworthy of representation.
Fire them; abandon them in the wilderness, and find some nice upper
middle class college-indoctrinated public service oriented liberals
who want and deserve the type of bipartisan consensus of which I,
TOM FRIEDMAN- SUPERGENIUS!, approve.

And without more Republican moderates, there is no way
to strike the kind of centrist bargains that have been at the heart
of American progress — that got us where we are and are essential
for where we need to go.

..."a base that denies global warming after Hurricane Sandy and
refuses to ban assault weapons after Sandy Hook — a base that would
rather see every American’s taxes rise rather than increase taxes
on millionaires —"...

Red herring followed by false dilemma, followed by outright
lie.
Have we found shithead's real name?

Note the implicit assumption as well that it's OK to use every
disastrous weather event as Proof That So-Called Global Warming Is
Real, but when the climate modellers' predictions don't pan out,
you're not allowed to say that's not proof their predictions are
wrong.

I linked an article the other day that was truly pathetic.
To paraphrase, catastrophists 'predicted' we'd have bad weather as
a result of climate change. We've had some bad weather,
ergo...
I predict if the sun comes up tomorrow, climate change isn't going
to cause horrible things to happen.
See how easy that is?

Notice that Friedman doesn't even go through rational
explanation for his lambasting of the "Republican base." It's just
one long line of question-begging. Anthropogenic global warming is
correct because fuck you that's why. Gun bans are an unqualified
good because fuck you that's why. Tax increases on the kulaks, I
mean, MILLIONAIRES is good because fuck you that's why.

I almost wish his dream of "the Republican Party has no future"
would come true because it would do away with the illusion that
TEAM Red and TEAM Blue are in material opposition to each
other.

Stabilization, of course, has long been the economic
playbook of the United States government; it has kept interest
rates low, shored up banks, purchased bad debts and printed money.
But the effect is akin to treating metastatic cancer with
painkillers. It has not only let deeper problems fester, but also
aggravated inequality. Bankers have continued to get rich using
taxpayer dollars as both fuel and backstop. And printing money
tends to disproportionately benefit a certain class. The rise in
asset prices made the superrich even richer, while the median
family income has dropped.

Overstabilization also corrects problems that ought not to
be corrected and renders the economy more fragile; and in a fragile
economy, even small errors can lead to crises and plunge the entire
system into chaos. That’s what happened in 2008. More than four
years after that financial crisis began, nothing has been done to
address its root causes.

Second, there must be skin in the game across the board, so
that nobody can inflict harm on others without first harming
himself. Bankers got rich — and are still rich — from transferring
risk to taxpayers (and we still haven’t seen clawbacks of executive
pay at companies that were bailed out). Likewise, Washington
bureaucrats haven’t been exposed to punishment for their errors,
whereas officials at the municipal level often have to face the
wrath of voters (and neighbors) who are affected by their
mistakes.

"Washington bureaucrats, punished for their errors"?

CRAZY TALK!

Oddly enough, they do not seem to be accepting any comments on
this piece.

See, that's just insane. At your wedding, you get to dress up
like a princess. When you give birth, your vagina might get ripped
apart.

Only one of those things sounds like I want it to be all about
me.

I'm pretty sure the group's real complaint is that they are
pro-midwife and thus anti-OB/GYN, which is one of those annoying
things where I agree with part of the cause (don't make
home/alternative births illegal at the behest of the medical
cartel) but think most of it's supporters are stupid douches (being
covered in blood and shit doesn't become beautiful and magical
because you did it underwater at a birthing center instead of in a
hospital).

IT IS THE MORAL DUTY OF THE UNITED STATES AS A RIGHTS-RESPECTING
NATION TO INFLICT THE APOCALYPSE UPON ALL NON-RIGHTS RESPECTING
NATIONS AND THEIR CITIZENS DESERVE IT FOR HAVING THE TEMERITY TO
ACTUALLY LIVE THERE.

Ted Kennedy Jr. (D), a son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy
(D), will not run for Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) seat if Kerry is
confirmed as the next secretary of State, according to a statement
he released Monday.

And for more holiday cheer!
"Postal Service struggles to stay solvent"
From the article:
"Union contract
In 2011, with mail volume and revenue well past its peak, the
service signed a contract with its largest union that prohibits
most employees from being fired if the service wants to
downsize."

There is no such thing as knowledge, truth, or reality. There is
no such thing as individualism. There is no such thing as
Aristotle. I get a blank check to rewrite reality, of which my
whims are the new standard.

A very good essay; Thanks! But rather than say "half the things
you know are wrong" why not just say as knowledge grows almost half
of everything you studied or read, becomes more complicated? (yes,
I acknowledge that some old beliefs are flat out wrong but nowhere
near 50%). For instance, I was, indeed, taught that dinosaurs were
"cold blooded". This was based on the assumption that dinosaurs
were all reptiles and reptiles are cold blooded. But now even the
claim that reptiles of today are cold blooded is under dispute.
This is apparently because the consensus is evolving (sic). Now it
is thought, by some at least, that the term “cold blooded” casts a
deceptive picture of actual behavior and I have read of the term
"Thermoegulation". This is all well and good. I enjoy reading about
it. But sometimes it is hard for a non-specialist to tell how much
substance is in the newer terms/descriptions vs. how much is
changing fashion/nuance. Anyway, thanks again.

After 55 years, I've learned that nothing I was ever taught is
true. The only things you can trust are your A, B, C's and 1, 2,
3's...and I often have questions about those.

Even in a library w/ real books, the key is knowing where to
find what you want to know. On the internet? Think of it as a huge
card catalogue in the old libraries. With the right keyword(s), you
can learn anything. (One of these days, I'll learn more about
grammar.)

The danger is in letting yourself become stuck in a rut, going
to the same sites over and over and over ...and never learning
anything new. Curiosity rules the internet, if you only knew it.
Learn something new every day. Never stop learning.

As for some of the rest of the article? Google: 'self-correcting
information cascades.' There's math involved and everything.
...keeping in mind that about 25% of all published scientific
papers are fraudulent in some way. So, don't take anyone's word for
anything. Not even mine and not even the author's. Do your own
research and do your own thinking.

As the article stated, a good portion of what you think you know
simply isn't so...and the rest was likely a lie to begin with.

"Some members of the public have also rejected the change,
citing the disagreement within the scientific community on the
issue, or for sentimental reasons,
maintaining that they have always known Pluto as a planet and will
continue to do so regardless of the IAU decision."

The public has spoken: "It's a planet. For... REASONS. Fuck you
and your scientistications."

An interesting article, but in my experience missing the point.
As long ago as the 90's it was clear to me as a PhD Chemist that
knowledge was to a great extent secondary to source-retrieval and
mostly analysis. By this I mean that esoteric facts or mundane
results might seep into the brain, but for truly adventurous
research more than facts was required. A wishy-washy headline
memory of results combined with an excellent ability to search the
media and whittle out the dross was (and is) required for novel
results.
For this reason, I believe that teaching facts is secondary (and
becoming more so every day) with critical analysis, and theory
construction.
I am as impressed by a "memory man" as I am by a chimp using tools.
What impresses me is someone with a broad overview of an area, who
can draw in and extrapolate by analogy into a totally new field.
That is genius, that is human intellect.

A 2010 study in the journal Scientometrics, looking at data
between 1907 and 2007, concurred. Sohbet Odaları Much of the
scientific knowledge in production today is academic busy work
designed to pad resumes and climb the greasy pole. Sohbet Siteleri

Higher education is the modern equivalent of monasteries and seminaries. Sucking up a large and increasing portion of the nation's wealth and twisting the minds that they come in contact with to non productive means.
Bankers have continued to get rich using taxpayer dollars as both fuel and backstop.

With the consent and assistance of the federal government of the United States of America
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